Of all the acquisitions this company has made, I don’t know how it’s possible that almost none, or none at all, turned out to be a good move. I’ve seen someone mention it here, so I wonder what are the main reasons for such poor decisions?
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Why are we even talking about this? Citrix is done, 10 years give or take a few. With the innovation of distributed computing and mobile applications Citrix is no longer a necessity for consumption or creation of data.
Everyday new applications are being created for client devices which access and manipulate data on remote systems, removing the need for terminal services and remote sessions, this is why they thought that Wrike was a good acquisition, but with the current leadership who is unable to innovate and drive products forward this will never happen.
So unless they can find a CEO who is capable of innovating and creating a product which will allow users ease of access to current and new systems, then the company is done... unfortunately.
Surprise, surprise. They do it all the time. It’s a classic pattern for any incompetent leader that joins.
@1cxh+1dLJl24n post on the "new manager playbook" rings so true, it hurts.
Story of years 1, 2, 3 make for a great interview narrative during year 4, on how they were a transformational leader and how they turned the ship around. How everything sucked when they joined ("my company was doing manual deploys till I introduced them to the word - automation!!"), how they applied leadership principles (regurgitated knowledge acquired through interview prep books), and saved the day.
Sharefile management is now all these heroes who can spout BS 24x7, while the ship continues to slowly sink.
They’d rather have it burn so they can blame it all on past decisions before their time.
Surprise, surprise. They do it all the time. It’s a classic pattern for any incompetent leader that joins.
First year - bad mouth everything inherited - product, quality, culture. Directly or indirectly blame the predecessors. Even founder should not be spared.
Second year - enough case built to get funding to fix ‘all the bad things done, by predecessors. Hire, restructure, keep every one busy and guessing .
Third Year - reality sinks in, outcomes aren’t there. No improvements to user base or profit margins. In fact it is declining. Yuck, time to find another job.
Forth Year - yay! found another company, doubled equity and responsibility. Time to repeat the steps.
Agree that Sapho was the worst in recent times. At least, Wrike could sustain independently in some small way (though not help drive core business). Sapho had no future - with or without Citrix. Fact that the sponsors of that acquisition are still around (other than DH) speaks a lot about accountability at Citrix.
Sapho's acquisition was a huge mistake :)
Sharefile was good while Jesse was there and there was autonomy - and love of the product and customers. Now it’s either the leftover zero-talent holdouts who have profited from the leadership vacuum, through rapid promotions. Or new faces who don’t give a sh-t about the product or the market it serves. They’d rather have it burn so they can blame it all on past decisions before their time.
Netscaler was the best if you go long back in history. During its prime days, it did really well.
If the question was the best one post Mark era, it’s - none, nada, zero - that turned out to be good acquisition. Mark has good share of success and failures but after that all acquisition has been questionable from alignment and big picture perspective.
Wrike appears to be going to be the biggest flop of all. I hope I am wrong but I never got any satisfactory message from leadership why and how it makes sense.
The problem is that no acquisition grows the core business. The acquisition is added to the suite. Zen app and Xendesktop get renamed but still the same thing then they add a product acquired by an acquisition then make it look like a big deal and a new product. Customers know it’s the same lame thing.
Unidesk acquisition was managed poorly. That acquisition should have been a differentiator for the Citrix line.
Sharefile seems to be one of the groups where managers get frequent promotions compared to the individual contributors. Definitely looks like someone is taking away all credit from IC.
Not for long. After Jesse and party left, clueless leaders who took over are ensuring similar fate for ShareFile. There is neither intent nor ability in these incompetent id--ts.
Sharefile probably best one
Because the decisions are made by people in management who are not qualified to be in that position ! They don't have a vision and seem to acquire companies to try and keep themselves afloat instead of acquiring based on a common vision. The decisions are made by keeping out smart engineers and managers purely as a political power move.